California Fire (Single Version) - Read the description
Added 2025-01-09 13:00:10 +0000 UTCI debated whether I was going to share this or not, but I’m an artist, it’s what I do.
In 2015 I released a song called California Fire off of the album One Last Stand. At the time I’m writing this, January 9th, 2025, Pacific Palisades, a town I grew up for a long time before moving to New York City, has been burned to the ground. So many places and structures I used to walk by everyday as a kid, including my high school Palisades Charter High School, have either been severely damaged or completely destroyed. Watching my childhood hometown burn to the ground was heartbreaking to say the least.
Immediately this song came back to mind for obvious reasons:
While the meaning behind California Fire at the time was more of a socially conscious message about climate change (something we still haven’t addressed 10 years later and honestly has a lot to do with what’s going on right now) it also stemmed from an intense fear of fire I had as a kid. You see that picture in the video? That’s me as a child looking at the flames of the 1993 Malibu Fire. I have a crystal clear memory of watching the flames coming over the hills while at my elementary school and having to evacuate in fear that the flames would reach us. And this wasn’t an isolated incident. Fires happen in California practically every year. I’ve driven though some that feel like Hell on Earth, and one of these (I can’t remember which) was the etymology of this song. I always feared that one of those fires would engulf my childhood apartment. 20 years after I moved out and watching from 3000 miles away, it finally happened.
I’m numb.
Some may find this song to be too dark for the moment, hence why I was hesitant to share it, but I’ve always used music to work through our darkest times because… well it’s cheaper than therapy.
Some interesting facts about this song, I wasn’t honestly that happy with it when I was finishing the album and almost considered taking it out, but my keyboardist Arthur Migliazza wisely suggested I leave it in. That’s Shareef Clayton blowing the trumpet solo along with Irwin Hall on Saxophone, Tetsuya Sato on bass, Manny Montanez on percussion, Becky Curtis singing backups along with Nick Kerelo, and Darcy Macrae on drums. Credit Jason Rosen for engineering the session and Jay Curtis for snapping that picture.
My heart goes out to everybody out there affected by these horrible fires, friends of mine who have lost their homes, and anyone still in the line of fire, please stay safe.
Comments
thanks for sharing JT it's terrifying and not to be selfish but to emphasize the problems with doing nothing about climate change is a place like Santa Fe new Mexico was already changing drastically in these last ten years with in particular what I've heard more politely than I often have been the California diaspora esp of wealth culture not moving in like many of us did but on to places like Santa Fe and many others including around Austin etc and the problem is the same behaviours that are cussing beautiful places people once lived to have become hard to live in and now Burnt to a horrifying crisp is too many humans are just unwilling to change their behaviors and take the moving aspect out and there's still so many reasons this isn't an isolated instance of heavy wind making Palisades burn up..whatever the media will say this is a systematic failure of a very serious issue as the humans continue to harm earth and earth continues to react so anyway don't be sorry if anything we need more artists to speak up more than ever...the owners leaders etc ain't doing a darn thing and now look..well be careful looking whether you've never been to la and don't know what Palisades are or lived there or what anyone with s heart soul and care will be devastated by the imagery and that's from afar although it isn't....were in this together like it or not
Stephen Jules Rubin
2025-01-09 16:34:19 +0000 UTC
